This is rather late, I totally forgot to post this.
1)Bladerunner:
Blade Runner is about Rick Deckard, a cop who “retires” Replicants. It is based off the book “Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick. The Replicants had escaped from slavery to try and get their creator to extend their lifespans, which are engineered to be four years long. Rick falls in love with another Replicant named Rachel, and after retiring all the others, runs away with her.
Meat Puppets, or Robopaths
The article by Thomas Foster discusses the texts Neuromancer by William Gibson and Antibodies by David J. Skal. It discusses the cyberpunk genre and how it has potential to redefine gender roles, but often doesn't. It also discusses the various themes present in Neuromancer and Antibodies such as the desire to be rid of the flesh or meat, and live purely in the Cyberworld(Case) or become a machine (Robopath).
Blade runner: A cop/bounty hunter who hunts rogue Replicants and kills them
Replicant: Genetically engineered Android
Robopath: Someone who desires to replace their body with prosthetics
Cyberpunk: A genre defined by it's heavy use of advanced technology and often dystopian society
The article talked of Neuromancer. It doesn't talk of the way that in the book, the female characters are more dominant than the male ones. They are also the more sexually forward. Does this affect any of the other conclusions?
The article also mentions the characters breaking their “hardwired shackles.” In what way does this relate to other movements where “shackles” are broken.
Why does the genetic engineer in Blade Runner have those weird midgets running around his house?
I personally found the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” better than Blade Runner. I found the explanation of the Android/Replicant better than the vagueness of the movie.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Cyberpunk Bodies
Meat Puppets/Robopaths
Fosters article disscusses the effects of cyberpunk idenitiy on society from either the "meat puppet" standpoint or a "robopath" perspective. The article is mostly based on a view of how cyberpunk bodies seem to affect "feminist, gay/lesbian, African American and postcolonial" bodies. Foster points out the differences between the mind, body, and machine. Foster then critiques other texts from Gibson to Haraway, mostly just summarizing their texts to support this idea of a "redefinition of embodiment." Foster uses many different examples to prove his point that embodiment has been changed by the idea of the cyberpunk, while at the same time discussing that a person cannot truly forget who they are (particularly for white male critics for some reason) a 'boy or girl.'
Blade Runner
Is a story about Deckard a retired blade runner (cop) who is brought back to "retire" some replicants that are on the loose on Earth. The replicants are humanoids that are illegal on Earth because of a war they had with humans. They only live for four years and are looking to increase how long they have to live. It takes place in LA in 2019, talk about a seriously un-environmentally friendly city. Deckard begins to look for these replicants meeting Rachel, a replicant who doesn't know she is one working for the man that created the replicants Tyrell, who says Rachel is "more human than human" and she eventually save Deckard from being killed by a replicant. The last male replicant Roy, kills Tyrell and Sebastian when he discovers that Tyrell will not help him live past the four year mark. Deckard ends up killing Roy's replicant girlfriend Pris, then dukes it out with him in the old apt building. In the end Roy dies after saving Deckard and Deckard runs away with Rachel.
Definitions
Cyberpunk - Fast-paced science fiction involving futuristic computer-based societies.
Meat Puppet - a person trapped in their own organic body, can also mean prostitute
Robopath - a person who believes they are a robot in an organic body
commodification - treatment of the body as a commodity (in cyberpunk definitions)
hardwired - To determine or put into effect by physiological or neurological mechanisms; make automatic or innate
Questions/Comments
1.) What was the significance of the unicorns in the movie?
2.) Is Deckard a replicant?
3.) Why are all animals robots? Is it related to the crazy amount of smog in the city?
4.) Why have women's bodies always been considered post modern?
5.) What exactly is an illegible human? And how can you be "more human than human"?
6.) What is with the concern about these cyberbodies when Foster points out himself that this is all fiction?
For being a futuristic film, I found the Polaroid picture pretty funny, same with the tiny windshield on the cop car, as well as him not wearing any gloves when touching evidence. After reading the Foster article, I really felt like I hadn't learned anything from him, but from the other authors, and the information would make more sense if you read it directly from them, not from summed up versions by Foster. Why does everything in this class go back to Freud in one way or another?
one more question
I should have posted this with the rest of the stuff, but. . . another question. . .
Why do replicants always go for the eyes?
Why do replicants always go for the eyes?
Cyberpunk bodies
Cyberpunk Bodies: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Foster’s “Meat Puppets or Robopaths?”
I. Description
Blade Runner is a film directed by Ridley Scott. The film is about Rick Deckard, a member of the Blade Runner Unit (a police squad that kills Replicants), who is assigned to kill genetically-produced criminal replicants (Nexus 6 Replicants). The story takes place in Los Angeles in November 2019. The Replicants were produced in the Nexus phase and were taken to the Off-world for slave labor. They are criminal replicants who were designed to copy humans in every way except for emotions. The Replicants have a four-year life span in place and are seeking for more years in their trip to Earth. Deckard is on a mission to kill the Replicants, apparently by himself, and learns about himself in the process as he falls for the girl, breaks two fingers, and battles evil.
Foster’s essay “Meat Puppets or Robopaths?” looks at David Skal’s novel Antibodies and William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer and describes the similarities and differences in the mens’ explanations of what it means to be a cyberpunk. He also looks at the distinctions between mind and body and human and machine. Foster says Skal’s work contradicts its “own critique of the robopaths in more fundamental and less overt ways.” He then says that the novel represents lesbian sexuality and abortion activists as monstrous and that he doesn’t entirely agree with Skal’s ideas of a cyberpunk. Foster seems to be more in favor of Gibson’s Neuromancer. He references Gibson’s character Case, a “ ‘console cowboy’ ” and “futuristic hacker”, to examine the ‘post-biological’ attitude and the relationship between flesh and meat puppets. Foster uses a variety of authors and examples to demonstrate the thought of cyborgs being meat puppets or robopaths. He concludes his essay with the idea of Case’s girlfriend, Michael, who may be seen as either a woman with a nontraditional name, or as a man who identifies himself as a woman.
II. Terms and concepts
Blade Runner:
“Replicants are like any other machine- they’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a benefit it’s not my problem.” –Rick. Machines have both beneficial and hazardous features.
Leon to Deckard: “Painful to live in fear, isn’t it?” Explores that when one is faced with death, they feel more pain and fear not just how long they have left to live, but how they are going to die.
Foster’s essay:
Cyberpunk- The thought of something being “high tech” and “low life” (Wikipedia)
Robopath- The idea of replacing the body with mechanical prostheses (pg. 215)
Meat puppet- prostitute (pg. 216)
Commodification- The experience of forced signification (pg. 221) – the process of making something into a good (commodity).
Embodiment- The subjective experience of having and using a body. (Wikipedia)
Case- The character in Gibson’s Neuromancer who has a neural implant that allows him to correspond with computer networks.
III. Review/questions/thoughts
Blade Runner:
“Chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure” Interesting that this was the welcoming message especially since this was what was advertised for those who came to America.
If the life-span of the “criminals” is four years, does that include a full life? Do they reproduce or have families?
Is this what the year 2019 is really going to look like? Whoa! I might be moving to L.A.…
Why L.A.? Why not New York City? Or Denver? Or Orlando? Or Minneapolis?
Replicant Rachel realizes differences between lesbian and a human. Doesn’t this implicate that she does have emotions since she responded by asking what her answer would mean?
Pris and Rachael as meat puppets?
What’s the significance with the owl? Does it have to do with vision?
Foster’s essay:
I thought the essay really didn’t have an ending. There should have been a conclusion paragraph that tied all of the themes together instead of it ending with thoughts about Neuromancer.
(page 211) What was Gibson really visualizing when he said cyberpunks ought to ‘live fast, die young, and leave a highly-augmented corpse’? It said that this refers to a body enhanced through mechanical prostheses and cybernetic interfaces but what was he really referring to?
(page 212) How have women’s bodies always been postmodern?
(page 216) ‘I may have been born meat, but I don’t have to die that way.’ What does this mean? How does one break away from ‘the meat’?
I. Description
Blade Runner is a film directed by Ridley Scott. The film is about Rick Deckard, a member of the Blade Runner Unit (a police squad that kills Replicants), who is assigned to kill genetically-produced criminal replicants (Nexus 6 Replicants). The story takes place in Los Angeles in November 2019. The Replicants were produced in the Nexus phase and were taken to the Off-world for slave labor. They are criminal replicants who were designed to copy humans in every way except for emotions. The Replicants have a four-year life span in place and are seeking for more years in their trip to Earth. Deckard is on a mission to kill the Replicants, apparently by himself, and learns about himself in the process as he falls for the girl, breaks two fingers, and battles evil.
Foster’s essay “Meat Puppets or Robopaths?” looks at David Skal’s novel Antibodies and William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer and describes the similarities and differences in the mens’ explanations of what it means to be a cyberpunk. He also looks at the distinctions between mind and body and human and machine. Foster says Skal’s work contradicts its “own critique of the robopaths in more fundamental and less overt ways.” He then says that the novel represents lesbian sexuality and abortion activists as monstrous and that he doesn’t entirely agree with Skal’s ideas of a cyberpunk. Foster seems to be more in favor of Gibson’s Neuromancer. He references Gibson’s character Case, a “ ‘console cowboy’ ” and “futuristic hacker”, to examine the ‘post-biological’ attitude and the relationship between flesh and meat puppets. Foster uses a variety of authors and examples to demonstrate the thought of cyborgs being meat puppets or robopaths. He concludes his essay with the idea of Case’s girlfriend, Michael, who may be seen as either a woman with a nontraditional name, or as a man who identifies himself as a woman.
II. Terms and concepts
Blade Runner:
“Replicants are like any other machine- they’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a benefit it’s not my problem.” –Rick. Machines have both beneficial and hazardous features.
Leon to Deckard: “Painful to live in fear, isn’t it?” Explores that when one is faced with death, they feel more pain and fear not just how long they have left to live, but how they are going to die.
Foster’s essay:
Cyberpunk- The thought of something being “high tech” and “low life” (Wikipedia)
Robopath- The idea of replacing the body with mechanical prostheses (pg. 215)
Meat puppet- prostitute (pg. 216)
Commodification- The experience of forced signification (pg. 221) – the process of making something into a good (commodity).
Embodiment- The subjective experience of having and using a body. (Wikipedia)
Case- The character in Gibson’s Neuromancer who has a neural implant that allows him to correspond with computer networks.
III. Review/questions/thoughts
Blade Runner:
“Chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure” Interesting that this was the welcoming message especially since this was what was advertised for those who came to America.
If the life-span of the “criminals” is four years, does that include a full life? Do they reproduce or have families?
Is this what the year 2019 is really going to look like? Whoa! I might be moving to L.A.…
Why L.A.? Why not New York City? Or Denver? Or Orlando? Or Minneapolis?
Replicant Rachel realizes differences between lesbian and a human. Doesn’t this implicate that she does have emotions since she responded by asking what her answer would mean?
Pris and Rachael as meat puppets?
What’s the significance with the owl? Does it have to do with vision?
Foster’s essay:
I thought the essay really didn’t have an ending. There should have been a conclusion paragraph that tied all of the themes together instead of it ending with thoughts about Neuromancer.
(page 211) What was Gibson really visualizing when he said cyberpunks ought to ‘live fast, die young, and leave a highly-augmented corpse’? It said that this refers to a body enhanced through mechanical prostheses and cybernetic interfaces but what was he really referring to?
(page 212) How have women’s bodies always been postmodern?
(page 216) ‘I may have been born meat, but I don’t have to die that way.’ What does this mean? How does one break away from ‘the meat’?
Week 10: Cyberpunk Bodies
Text: Meat Puppets or Robopaths? Cyberpunk and the Question of Embodiment
Centering on the novels Antibodies, by David J. Skal, and Neuromancer, by William Gibson, Thomas Foster digs into the nature of cyborg and cyberpunk identity, confronting the limiting dualities that stand in the way.
He first digs into the necessary background information on cyberpunk including its commodification and the perhaps somewhat typically 'punk' attitude of Gibson that 'As soon as the label is there, it's gone.'
He then moves on to the cyborg in a racialized context, examining the Marvel comic Deathlok. In selectively quoting W.E.B. Du Bois, Deathlok, so it seems, has defined himself in terms of 'multiple forms of hybridity, without transforming one form into a metaphor of another, racial identity as a metaphor for the cyborg, for example.'
He then moves on to the 'meat' of his argument, if you'll excuse the pun. Here, he digs into [sorry, I don't know what's up with me and digging tonight] gender, fetishism, and cultural identity. In Neuromancer, gender in particular (according to Foster) may find a way out of its limitations, whereas Antibodies takes a much more reactionary stance on the cyborg
Film: Blade Runner
Blade Runner is set in the inconceivably distant future of the 21st century, when advanced cybernetic robots known as 'replicants' have become illegal on planet Earth. The blade runner Deckard is informed of several replicants that (who?) are to be 'retired,' a euphemism that makes it sound a lot less violent than it actually is. The strongest among these, Roy, wishes to quite literally meet his maker, and for this he requests the help of one of the Tyrell Corporation's (makers of replicants) genetic designers, J.F. Sebastian, who has in the meantime met the replicant Pris. Leon, another replicant, is being pursued by Deckard. Deckard meets a replicant, Rachel, who (that?) does not know she (it?) is a replicant; it is Rachel who saves him from having his eyes gouged out by Leon. This incident occurs directly after Deckard 'retires' a replicant working (nude) at a sleazy bar. In the end Pris is also 'retired,' but Roy, who drives Deckard into the position of merely trying to survive, attempts thereby to instill empathy before finally succumbing to the end of his predetermined four year lifespan. Deckard hereupon announces his retirement, which is to say, that he's got no intention to 'retire' Rachel, with whom he flees in the end to who-knows-where.
Terms
Meat puppet- one confined to an organic body, in Neuromancer, more literally a prostitute controlled by software, while consciousness is suppressed.
Cyberpunk- literary movement within science fiction, with a focus on cyborg characters and the relationship between the body and technology.
Robopaths- those who believe themselves to be robots trapped in human bodies.
artificial intelligence- some electronically programmed form of intelligence, emulating the human type we all take for granted.
cyberspace- surprisingly to me, coined by William Gibson to be an effective buzzword, denoting a complex array of interconnected electronic information; perhaps now it is better to just say 'the internet,' as, regardless of how people want to define it, the word often gets used this way.
Questions
Why does Deckard drink so much?
What does the vision/dream of the unicorn signify, and what of the origami unicorn left by one of the cops?
It has already been discussed how cyborg identity might relate to the traditional, dualistic concepts of gender. How might it relate to those whose gender is not so easily classified?
Have people begun to think of themselves, as some of the characters in cyberpunk novels do, as 'meat'? Is this a real danger?
If cyborgs present a 'crisis in dualistic thinking,' then how might is this to be resolved? Should this be resolved at all?
Do androids dream of electric sheep???
Centering on the novels Antibodies, by David J. Skal, and Neuromancer, by William Gibson, Thomas Foster digs into the nature of cyborg and cyberpunk identity, confronting the limiting dualities that stand in the way.
He first digs into the necessary background information on cyberpunk including its commodification and the perhaps somewhat typically 'punk' attitude of Gibson that 'As soon as the label is there, it's gone.'
He then moves on to the cyborg in a racialized context, examining the Marvel comic Deathlok. In selectively quoting W.E.B. Du Bois, Deathlok, so it seems, has defined himself in terms of 'multiple forms of hybridity, without transforming one form into a metaphor of another, racial identity as a metaphor for the cyborg, for example.'
He then moves on to the 'meat' of his argument, if you'll excuse the pun. Here, he digs into [sorry, I don't know what's up with me and digging tonight] gender, fetishism, and cultural identity. In Neuromancer, gender in particular (according to Foster) may find a way out of its limitations, whereas Antibodies takes a much more reactionary stance on the cyborg
Film: Blade Runner
Blade Runner is set in the inconceivably distant future of the 21st century, when advanced cybernetic robots known as 'replicants' have become illegal on planet Earth. The blade runner Deckard is informed of several replicants that (who?) are to be 'retired,' a euphemism that makes it sound a lot less violent than it actually is. The strongest among these, Roy, wishes to quite literally meet his maker, and for this he requests the help of one of the Tyrell Corporation's (makers of replicants) genetic designers, J.F. Sebastian, who has in the meantime met the replicant Pris. Leon, another replicant, is being pursued by Deckard. Deckard meets a replicant, Rachel, who (that?) does not know she (it?) is a replicant; it is Rachel who saves him from having his eyes gouged out by Leon. This incident occurs directly after Deckard 'retires' a replicant working (nude) at a sleazy bar. In the end Pris is also 'retired,' but Roy, who drives Deckard into the position of merely trying to survive, attempts thereby to instill empathy before finally succumbing to the end of his predetermined four year lifespan. Deckard hereupon announces his retirement, which is to say, that he's got no intention to 'retire' Rachel, with whom he flees in the end to who-knows-where.
Terms
Meat puppet- one confined to an organic body, in Neuromancer, more literally a prostitute controlled by software, while consciousness is suppressed.
Cyberpunk- literary movement within science fiction, with a focus on cyborg characters and the relationship between the body and technology.
Robopaths- those who believe themselves to be robots trapped in human bodies.
artificial intelligence- some electronically programmed form of intelligence, emulating the human type we all take for granted.
cyberspace- surprisingly to me, coined by William Gibson to be an effective buzzword, denoting a complex array of interconnected electronic information; perhaps now it is better to just say 'the internet,' as, regardless of how people want to define it, the word often gets used this way.
Questions
Why does Deckard drink so much?
What does the vision/dream of the unicorn signify, and what of the origami unicorn left by one of the cops?
It has already been discussed how cyborg identity might relate to the traditional, dualistic concepts of gender. How might it relate to those whose gender is not so easily classified?
Have people begun to think of themselves, as some of the characters in cyberpunk novels do, as 'meat'? Is this a real danger?
If cyborgs present a 'crisis in dualistic thinking,' then how might is this to be resolved? Should this be resolved at all?
Do androids dream of electric sheep???
Cyberpunk Bodies
Meat Puppets or Robopaths? Cyberpunk and the Question of Embodiment
This article looks at how the body is viewed within the cyberpunk movement. It also shows how science fiction can be used to look at the present instead of how it is normally interpreted to look at the future. It looks at how within the cyberpunk movement the flesh is viewed as a hinderance and that the goal is to get rid of the flesh or change it as much as possible. It also looks at the binary between human and machine or human and enhanced human and how this can change race relations and gender relations to be either create a greater gap or bring them closer together. One of the main things this article seems to explore is how the people whom are parts of more then one binary within the cyberpunk movement are viewed by themselves as outsiders.
Blade Runner
The movie Blade Runner is about a future world where Nexus a company has created replicants who are human like machine. After a mutiny by the replicants in an off world colony, replicants are banned from earth. The story is about Dex a blade runner, special police force used to hunt and “retire” replicants, whose job it is to catch a group of replicants who recently hijacked a ship and came to earth. The goal of these replicants is to find a way to length their life span which as it is for all replicants is a mere four years. Dex hunts the replicants down and kills them but as he is doing this he also falls in love with a different replicant. He appears to have qualms about killing being that are so close to humans and there is always the question of what if he accidently kills a human. In the end the groups of replicants all die the last one because his life span is up and Dex runs away with his replicant girlfriend who is shortly going to die.
Replicant- a human like being/machine made by Nexus corporation in the movie Blade Runner.
Blade Runner- A special police force used to hunt and “retire” replicants from the movie Blade Runner.
Meat puppet- a prostitute or someone who is not technologically enhanced.
Cyberpunk- a movement born in the late 1980’s that looks at how computer networks and cyberspacecan interfaced with human beings to be experienced by human beings.
Are the replicants living or none living beings?
Why is it acceptable to have a replicant that is purely made for sexual purposes and what is changed in her model to make her this way?
Whose property is a replicant?
What was this article trying to say about the way humans interact with their bodies?
When humans become technologically enhanced is it important to keep difference such as race and gender?
This article looks at how the body is viewed within the cyberpunk movement. It also shows how science fiction can be used to look at the present instead of how it is normally interpreted to look at the future. It looks at how within the cyberpunk movement the flesh is viewed as a hinderance and that the goal is to get rid of the flesh or change it as much as possible. It also looks at the binary between human and machine or human and enhanced human and how this can change race relations and gender relations to be either create a greater gap or bring them closer together. One of the main things this article seems to explore is how the people whom are parts of more then one binary within the cyberpunk movement are viewed by themselves as outsiders.
Blade Runner
The movie Blade Runner is about a future world where Nexus a company has created replicants who are human like machine. After a mutiny by the replicants in an off world colony, replicants are banned from earth. The story is about Dex a blade runner, special police force used to hunt and “retire” replicants, whose job it is to catch a group of replicants who recently hijacked a ship and came to earth. The goal of these replicants is to find a way to length their life span which as it is for all replicants is a mere four years. Dex hunts the replicants down and kills them but as he is doing this he also falls in love with a different replicant. He appears to have qualms about killing being that are so close to humans and there is always the question of what if he accidently kills a human. In the end the groups of replicants all die the last one because his life span is up and Dex runs away with his replicant girlfriend who is shortly going to die.
Replicant- a human like being/machine made by Nexus corporation in the movie Blade Runner.
Blade Runner- A special police force used to hunt and “retire” replicants from the movie Blade Runner.
Meat puppet- a prostitute or someone who is not technologically enhanced.
Cyberpunk- a movement born in the late 1980’s that looks at how computer networks and cyberspacecan interfaced with human beings to be experienced by human beings.
Are the replicants living or none living beings?
Why is it acceptable to have a replicant that is purely made for sexual purposes and what is changed in her model to make her this way?
Whose property is a replicant?
What was this article trying to say about the way humans interact with their bodies?
When humans become technologically enhanced is it important to keep difference such as race and gender?
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Proposals w/ Dr. V.'s Comments and Resources
Hi all,
I forgot to mention today when passing back your proposals - please keep the copy I gave you with comments, in addition to any resources I printed out for you, and turn it back in to me together with your final version of your project. If you're worried you may misplace it, you can give it back to me now and I'll make a copy of it. I would have made copies before turning them back to you, but I wanted to make sure I got them back to you as soon as possible and didn't have time to make copies before class today.
Thanks!
I forgot to mention today when passing back your proposals - please keep the copy I gave you with comments, in addition to any resources I printed out for you, and turn it back in to me together with your final version of your project. If you're worried you may misplace it, you can give it back to me now and I'll make a copy of it. I would have made copies before turning them back to you, but I wanted to make sure I got them back to you as soon as possible and didn't have time to make copies before class today.
Thanks!
Barbara Creed’s “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine” first talks about the mythological creature Medusa and Freud’s interpretation of her sexual meaning. She then goes into great detail about an essay entitled Powers of Horror by Julia Kristeva, where Kristeva gives a historical and religious side of abjection, where the corpse is the ultimate representation of abjection. This is also present in cinema. She then describes horror films as a form of abjection with the precense of vampires, ghouls, zombies, witches, and werewolves.
There are three ways that abjection is tied into horror films. One is the corpse, the second is this idea of having a border between good and evil, human and inhuman, or between normal and abnormal sexual desire is crossed. This is the central theme in many horror films such as the Carrie, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the Cat People. The third way is the maternal figure being abject. This is present in films such as Psycho and Carrie where the mother has trouble letting go of their child and the absence of the father figure makes the mother even more monstrous.
In the movie Alien many of these forms of abjection are present, the main idea being the abject maternal figure. This is represented by the life support system on the Nostromo happily named mother and the unknown spaceship being shaped as legs and the crew mates enter in through the “vagina”. This is also represented by the alien itself being the monstrous abject maternal figure.
Key Terms:
Abjection- idea of being cast down
Archaic mother- mother having trouble letting go of her offspring and nurtures them to much.
Semiotic chora-the maternal body becoming the site of conflicting desires.
Questions:
1. Is the face hugger alien represented as a father or mother figure?
2. When Kane enters the “womb” of the foreign ship and becomes impregnated, how does this signify “incestous desire”?
3. How does the alien represent a maternal figure?
There are three ways that abjection is tied into horror films. One is the corpse, the second is this idea of having a border between good and evil, human and inhuman, or between normal and abnormal sexual desire is crossed. This is the central theme in many horror films such as the Carrie, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the Cat People. The third way is the maternal figure being abject. This is present in films such as Psycho and Carrie where the mother has trouble letting go of their child and the absence of the father figure makes the mother even more monstrous.
In the movie Alien many of these forms of abjection are present, the main idea being the abject maternal figure. This is represented by the life support system on the Nostromo happily named mother and the unknown spaceship being shaped as legs and the crew mates enter in through the “vagina”. This is also represented by the alien itself being the monstrous abject maternal figure.
Key Terms:
Abjection- idea of being cast down
Archaic mother- mother having trouble letting go of her offspring and nurtures them to much.
Semiotic chora-the maternal body becoming the site of conflicting desires.
Questions:
1. Is the face hugger alien represented as a father or mother figure?
2. When Kane enters the “womb” of the foreign ship and becomes impregnated, how does this signify “incestous desire”?
3. How does the alien represent a maternal figure?
Monday, October 6, 2008
Monsterous Feminine, Alien, H.R. Giger
Text:
Barbra Creeds Monsterous Feminine takes a look at how women are depicted in horror movies. She begins by giving a look at how historically, in different religions and cultures, womens menstral cycles, and vagina are viewed as monsterous and how these ideas have come to play a role in horror flixs. She also discusses various other aspects of the horror film in the soul-less bodies, sickness, terror, desire, etc. in "abjection at work". Creed ties all of these views and concepts in interpreting the film Alien.
Alien takes place deep in space aboard a cargo ship named "Mother". The crew is taken out of there deep sleep pods halfway to Earth to investigate an unknown signal. The crew leaves Mother by detaching a shuttle ship from "umbilicus" in order to investigate the planet, and determine the origin of the transmission. Three crew members come back to the shuttle, after exploring the deserted ship, only to have one member of the crew have an "unknown" alien stuck to his face that grately resembles a vagina with arms and tail. Later the alien falls off the crew members face, after empregnanting him, and allowing the true alien to be born. The movie ends with Sigourney Wiever, and her cat, being the sole servivor.
H.R. Giger is a Swiss surrilist who has created the world and image of Alien. He is also a painter, sculpter, architect (interior), and designer. His work consists of the combination of man and machine.
Key Terms
Demarcation: is the act of creating a boundary around a place or thing
Cathexis: as the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea
Abjection: the state of being cast off
Questions:
Do we conform to the partiarchical sense of viewing women as 'monsterous' in the simplist of forms?
Why have women been historically viewed as evil? what makes women different from men?
Comments:
I enjoyed the movie and the symbolism invovlved. The reading gave a little bit more insite into why we have these female images of being monsterous, but it still left questions as to why we have developed this way.
Barbra Creeds Monsterous Feminine takes a look at how women are depicted in horror movies. She begins by giving a look at how historically, in different religions and cultures, womens menstral cycles, and vagina are viewed as monsterous and how these ideas have come to play a role in horror flixs. She also discusses various other aspects of the horror film in the soul-less bodies, sickness, terror, desire, etc. in "abjection at work". Creed ties all of these views and concepts in interpreting the film Alien.
Alien takes place deep in space aboard a cargo ship named "Mother". The crew is taken out of there deep sleep pods halfway to Earth to investigate an unknown signal. The crew leaves Mother by detaching a shuttle ship from "umbilicus" in order to investigate the planet, and determine the origin of the transmission. Three crew members come back to the shuttle, after exploring the deserted ship, only to have one member of the crew have an "unknown" alien stuck to his face that grately resembles a vagina with arms and tail. Later the alien falls off the crew members face, after empregnanting him, and allowing the true alien to be born. The movie ends with Sigourney Wiever, and her cat, being the sole servivor.
H.R. Giger is a Swiss surrilist who has created the world and image of Alien. He is also a painter, sculpter, architect (interior), and designer. His work consists of the combination of man and machine.
Key Terms
Demarcation: is the act of creating a boundary around a place or thing
Cathexis: as the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea
Abjection: the state of being cast off
Questions:
Do we conform to the partiarchical sense of viewing women as 'monsterous' in the simplist of forms?
Why have women been historically viewed as evil? what makes women different from men?
Comments:
I enjoyed the movie and the symbolism invovlved. The reading gave a little bit more insite into why we have these female images of being monsterous, but it still left questions as to why we have developed this way.
Week 7: The Monsterous-Feminine
Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine An Imaginary Abjection
By: Barbara Creed
In Creed's writings she starts off by talking about the mythology of gendered monsters and how Medusa's head of writhing serpents somehow look the horrifying sight of the mother's genitals. It was said that when men looked at Medusa they got terrified and turn stiff, Freud pointed out that turning stiff could also mean having an erection. This would then mean that Medusa actually turned on men instead of repulsing them. Creed points out that all horrific figures are "bodies without souls" (the vampire), "the living corpse" (the zombie), and the corpse-eater (the ghoul). Creed explains that to the extent that abjection works on the socio-cultural arena, the horror film would appear to be, in at least three ways, an illustration of the work of abjection. The first one is the corpse which is mutilated followed by an array of bodily fluids. The second one is the function of the monstrous which she is suppose to bring about an encounter between the symbolic order that which threatens its stability. The third one refers to the construction of the maternal figure as abject. In this she explains that the child is wanting freedom away from the mother and the mother is reluctant to let go of her child. Creed then goes on to give her perspective on the film Alien, here she interprets the space craft as a womb and the alien as the toothed vagina. Creed explains the roles of the mother and father and how children view birth.
Alien
By:Ridley Scott
The spaceship Nostromo receives a call from another planet and goes to investigate. When three of the members get off their spaceship and wander on the windy dark planet they discover another spaceship which seems to be deserted. When one of the three members Kane goes inside to further investigate he finds giant eggs with pulsating figures inside. One of the eggs opens up and a creature jumps out and clings to Kan's face. The other two members take him back and let him in Nostromo even though Ripley is against it for safety purposes. Once inside the other crew members inspect Kane with the alien suctioned to his face and head, awhile later the alien releases itself and they think that the alien is dead, little do they know that the alien actually impregnated Kane and later at dinner the alien baby fights it's way out of Kane's chest killing him. A plan is called into action and all the crew members go on a quest to find and kill the monstrous alien. The caption Dallas is the next one to die and shorty after that everyone is dead except Parker, Lambert, Ripley and her cat. They are planning to destroy the ship and leave on a smaller space craft connected to the underbelly of the Nostromo. Ripley goes on an attempt to find her cat and when she comes back to get Lambert and Parker they have been ripped apart by an alien. Ripley flips a couple of switches and activates the spaceship to self destruct. Ripley runs for the smaller space craft and launches off with barley any time left destroying the aliens and saving only herself and her cat.
Terms:
By: Barbara Creed
In Creed's writings she starts off by talking about the mythology of gendered monsters and how Medusa's head of writhing serpents somehow look the horrifying sight of the mother's genitals. It was said that when men looked at Medusa they got terrified and turn stiff, Freud pointed out that turning stiff could also mean having an erection. This would then mean that Medusa actually turned on men instead of repulsing them. Creed points out that all horrific figures are "bodies without souls" (the vampire), "the living corpse" (the zombie), and the corpse-eater (the ghoul). Creed explains that to the extent that abjection works on the socio-cultural arena, the horror film would appear to be, in at least three ways, an illustration of the work of abjection. The first one is the corpse which is mutilated followed by an array of bodily fluids. The second one is the function of the monstrous which she is suppose to bring about an encounter between the symbolic order that which threatens its stability. The third one refers to the construction of the maternal figure as abject. In this she explains that the child is wanting freedom away from the mother and the mother is reluctant to let go of her child. Creed then goes on to give her perspective on the film Alien, here she interprets the space craft as a womb and the alien as the toothed vagina. Creed explains the roles of the mother and father and how children view birth.
Alien
By:Ridley Scott
The spaceship Nostromo receives a call from another planet and goes to investigate. When three of the members get off their spaceship and wander on the windy dark planet they discover another spaceship which seems to be deserted. When one of the three members Kane goes inside to further investigate he finds giant eggs with pulsating figures inside. One of the eggs opens up and a creature jumps out and clings to Kan's face. The other two members take him back and let him in Nostromo even though Ripley is against it for safety purposes. Once inside the other crew members inspect Kane with the alien suctioned to his face and head, awhile later the alien releases itself and they think that the alien is dead, little do they know that the alien actually impregnated Kane and later at dinner the alien baby fights it's way out of Kane's chest killing him. A plan is called into action and all the crew members go on a quest to find and kill the monstrous alien. The caption Dallas is the next one to die and shorty after that everyone is dead except Parker, Lambert, Ripley and her cat. They are planning to destroy the ship and leave on a smaller space craft connected to the underbelly of the Nostromo. Ripley goes on an attempt to find her cat and when she comes back to get Lambert and Parker they have been ripped apart by an alien. Ripley flips a couple of switches and activates the spaceship to self destruct. Ripley runs for the smaller space craft and launches off with barley any time left destroying the aliens and saving only herself and her cat.
Terms:
- semiotic chora- the maternal body becomes the site of conflicting desires.
- Oedipus complex- According to the theory, the complex appears between the ages of three and five. The child feels sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and desires the death of the parent of the same sex.
- unheimlich- the uncanny:concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange.
- archaic mother- fantasy mother of the first few months of the infant's life.
- parthenogenic-is an asexual form of reproduction found in females where growth and development of embryos or seeds occurs without fertilization by a male.
Questions
- Why do people risk their own lives for their pets?
- Do you think that Ripley's cat had any significant meaning in the movie?
- Why are vaginas always looked upon as horrifying and monstrous? The penis isn't anything that pretty and great to look at either.
- Why didn't the crew self destruct the ship earlier in the movie?
Comments
- In Alien the crew didn't seem to be really worried about Kane and the alien on his head, they seemed relitevly calm for the situation they were in.
- Ripley played a heroic women in this movie, the other women (Lambert) in the movie probably was in it to make Ripley look even more powerful since Lambet was freaking out and crying helplessly the whole time.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Yet another Armored Bodies abstract, or, Late Post is Late
In Male Fantasies, Klaus Theweleit explores the culture of fascism, and at its heart finds a fantasy of the male body as a hyper-powered, impervious machine, rigidly contained and invulnerable within an armor or military discipline. Not surprisingly, he also finds a revulsion against human warmth and sensuality, and especially against femininity and emotion. These are identified with the threatening "mass"--whether the working-class masses, or the secret, vulnerable mass of soft flesh, blood, entrails and excrement within the body itself--as objects of loathing, to be repudiated, confined, beaten down, lest they subsume the hard male self. At first glance, it's hard to see what this has to do with Tank Girl, a comic about a "grotty," farting, chain-smoking, hard-drinking, kangaroo-shagging soldier grrl who goes AWOL in the outback with her souped-up tank after an urgent mission (to deliver a shipment of colostomy bags) goes way, way south. If there's a connection, it's that Tank Girl, with her midriff-baring tops and crutty undies, her PMS and her kink for talking mutant kangaroos, is shamelessly and transgressively a body with lusts and hungers. The humor of the comic depends on her being wildly subversive of anything a good soldier, or a nice girl, is supposed to be.
Questions:
"The most urgent task of the man of steel is to pursue, to dam in, and to subdue any force that threatens to transform him back into the horribly disorganized jumble of flesh, hair, skin, bones, intestines and feelings that calls itself human." In the wake of the Great War, the horror of being reduced to that "horribly disorganized jumble" would be fresh in men's minds, and the fantasy of being invulnerable to it is understandable. Yet the reality of battle would very quickly give the lie to this fantasy, so why did those who subscribed to the fantasy--including veterans of the war, who would have known better--see combat as a supreme good?
Can we really see the body itself as an acting "subject" (Foreword, xviii), constructing the external world in its own image," and why would this act of construction be ascribed to the body and not the mind inhabiting the body?
Is Theweleit's explanation of the origin of the machine-fantasy--from imperfect ego-formation in early childhood--convincing?
What is accomplished by making the protagonist of Tank Girl female?
Terms:
Desiring-machine: a reframing of the concept of desire as a productive force that manufactures itself
Introjection: the opposite of projection--internalizing an exterior object within the self.
Questions:
"The most urgent task of the man of steel is to pursue, to dam in, and to subdue any force that threatens to transform him back into the horribly disorganized jumble of flesh, hair, skin, bones, intestines and feelings that calls itself human." In the wake of the Great War, the horror of being reduced to that "horribly disorganized jumble" would be fresh in men's minds, and the fantasy of being invulnerable to it is understandable. Yet the reality of battle would very quickly give the lie to this fantasy, so why did those who subscribed to the fantasy--including veterans of the war, who would have known better--see combat as a supreme good?
Can we really see the body itself as an acting "subject" (Foreword, xviii), constructing the external world in its own image," and why would this act of construction be ascribed to the body and not the mind inhabiting the body?
Is Theweleit's explanation of the origin of the machine-fantasy--from imperfect ego-formation in early childhood--convincing?
What is accomplished by making the protagonist of Tank Girl female?
Terms:
Desiring-machine: a reframing of the concept of desire as a productive force that manufactures itself
Introjection: the opposite of projection--internalizing an exterior object within the self.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Abstract: The Armored Body
1) summary
Tank Girl is a comic book from 1988 featuring a seemingly emotionless, bloodthirsty, alcoholic and possibly insane yet somehow very sexy girl who joins the army in her homeland of Australia in search of blood and guts. She becomes outlawed from the army after they fail to give her any assignments of merit and decides to live in the tank and basically deal with what comes to her. She kills a pack of rogue kangaroos (after having sex with one of them, apparently) and a man who claimed to be her long-lost "bastard" father as a joke. Then she kills his cronie. There is no plotline to this comic and it has said to be a manifestation of women's growing power, especially in the British punk movement. Also, this comic was the brainchild of a man who was infamous for drawing huge penises on any piece of paper given to him (wikipedia).
Theweleit's text (and the foreword) talks about the absorbtion of fascism into the body, and how bodies were viewed by both the fascist ideology and by the self in the post-WWI German world. Theweleit concentrates on the Freikorps because he discovered a huge primary source from soldiers at the time. Theweleit's theory states that the fascists feared the feminine, associating wickedness with floods and "softness." They also feared the feminine within thsemselves and so idealized a sort of man-machine with no emotions and no mother. Theweleit argues that misogyny plays a bigger part in Freikorps sentiment than anti-Semitism.
2) key terms - pretty straightforward...
3) questions
1. Why doesn't Tank Girl have a name or a father?
2. Who's that guy that appears asking for Jane then terrorizes the tank?
3. Who does the comic strip ridicule? What does this reveal about the political and social ideology of the time?
4. What sort of values are applauded in the comic, if any?
5. Is Tank Girl portrayed as an ideal character?
6.Have diguised fascist ideals been transferred to American culture? Do we see masculine women and feminine men as "threatening," as Theweleit says of fascists?
7. How are gender roles in fascist Germany similar to gender roles in American pop culture today?
8. Why do fascist men fear pleasure? How is pleasure associated with Judaism?
Uhh... wow. Tank Girl is a hilarious parody of "girl power" and fascists were just pathetic...
Tank Girl is a comic book from 1988 featuring a seemingly emotionless, bloodthirsty, alcoholic and possibly insane yet somehow very sexy girl who joins the army in her homeland of Australia in search of blood and guts. She becomes outlawed from the army after they fail to give her any assignments of merit and decides to live in the tank and basically deal with what comes to her. She kills a pack of rogue kangaroos (after having sex with one of them, apparently) and a man who claimed to be her long-lost "bastard" father as a joke. Then she kills his cronie. There is no plotline to this comic and it has said to be a manifestation of women's growing power, especially in the British punk movement. Also, this comic was the brainchild of a man who was infamous for drawing huge penises on any piece of paper given to him (wikipedia).
Theweleit's text (and the foreword) talks about the absorbtion of fascism into the body, and how bodies were viewed by both the fascist ideology and by the self in the post-WWI German world. Theweleit concentrates on the Freikorps because he discovered a huge primary source from soldiers at the time. Theweleit's theory states that the fascists feared the feminine, associating wickedness with floods and "softness." They also feared the feminine within thsemselves and so idealized a sort of man-machine with no emotions and no mother. Theweleit argues that misogyny plays a bigger part in Freikorps sentiment than anti-Semitism.
2) key terms - pretty straightforward...
- sensuous anti-sensualism - preoccupation of the warrior with the perimeters of the body, a disembodied dis-sensuality
3) questions
1. Why doesn't Tank Girl have a name or a father?
2. Who's that guy that appears asking for Jane then terrorizes the tank?
3. Who does the comic strip ridicule? What does this reveal about the political and social ideology of the time?
4. What sort of values are applauded in the comic, if any?
5. Is Tank Girl portrayed as an ideal character?
6.Have diguised fascist ideals been transferred to American culture? Do we see masculine women and feminine men as "threatening," as Theweleit says of fascists?
7. How are gender roles in fascist Germany similar to gender roles in American pop culture today?
8. Why do fascist men fear pleasure? How is pleasure associated with Judaism?
Uhh... wow. Tank Girl is a hilarious parody of "girl power" and fascists were just pathetic...
(original post date: 10/6/08 at 12:38pm, adjusted by Kris to keep abstracts in correct weekly order)
In Male Fantasies Klaus Theweleit explores fascism through the Freikorps. Analyzing writings from members of the Freikorps Theweleit discusses the need for men to become machines for the military in order to live ‘male’ lives completely devoid of any feminine traits. He pulls from writings of Jünger and Freudian ideas to talk about the fear of feminine traits and behaviors.
Effluent- flowing out, moving forward
Pragmatic- pertaining to a practical point of view or practical considerations
Schlappschwanz- sissy
Jocularity- joking
What is the significance and symbolism of Tank Girl’s love-entanglement with the kangaroo?
Why do you think Tank Girl’s ‘important missions’ all seem somewhat meaningless and ultimately demeaning?
The second to last paragraph on page 155 of Male Fantasies talks about troops as a single machine. If that machine has no independence, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having a machine in the first place?
On page 152 of MF, there’s a question about Salomon’s happiness as a part of the military machine. Does happiness seem to be an appropriate word? Especially since earlier it is referenced “…the military academy as an “institution” (Anstalt), a place where the cadet lives behind prison bars.”
How sweet does the Hitler Youth motorcycle squadron look?
What is the significance of men only receiving letters from their mothers and not significant others?
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